Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1887-11-16
IN 4 CHINESE YAAMEN.
A Boat Ride Through a Long and
Devious Waterway.


Devious Waterway.
Through a consular friend, who in
the course OF some Official work had
made the acquaintance and gained the
deep friendship of a civil magistrate, L
had at least the good fortune to visit
mandarin's family in Verltable yaa-
men in one of the Oldest cities of in
terror China. Our mandarin host sent
a boat full of his servants down TO the
treaty port to give US his greetings and
to escort us through the long and de-
viOus waterway OF river, creek and
canal that led to the hoaTy walls of
Chang Sha. There were three for
eigners In the party and it took two
beats to carry us in proper state, with
third and smaller boat for our own
servants and a fourth boat hlled with
the mandarin's contingent.
The Chinese house boat is most
perfect thing of Its kind, with its
carved, gilded and most beautifully
varnlshed woodwork and Its many ln-
geniOus contrivances. In country
where there are no roads and no land
vehicles save the sedan chair or the
more recent wheelbarrow, with its
CItdhllR dAlt anu AALlCGlkchAA bsRieAAANN1
all travel is by the network Of creeks
and canals that connect the great
waterways OF the empire. The meanest
Chinaman can pole his skiff free and
unmolested from Canton to Pelling and
from the seashore to the Great Wall
over a system of water routes that
were old when western nations were in
their first youth. The house boats
evolution from the small sampan, in
which a whole Chinese family lives, to
the beautifully fitted homes in which
the foreigners take their pleasurings
and men go off on long hunting trips,
was a gradual thing. One carries all
the servants and the whole household
equipment on a boat trip, and, with
regular beds and baths, the procession
OF courses and elaborate dinners, the
life is little changed and has no prlva-
tions.
Starting off with the tide we went
up the river at speed that gave the
| lowdah, or skipper, nothing to do but
order the course steered with the large
oars at the stern, but in the narrower
reaches OF the creeks and canals the
crew sculled with the big oars and put
| up the sails to catch any favoring
| breath of a breeze. We gathered IL
| one boat to have 4 O'Clock tea and for
! the great ceremony of dinner, and at
night dropped off to sleep in our COM
! Portable state rooms to the regular
| thump of the oars and the swish of
water, varied by strange rapping on
| the bottom of the boat as bed Of
/ heavy topped water plants slipped
! under the keel.
When we came out on the little
decks of our boats in the dewy hours,
! the string OF brown boats with their
| gilded portals and red curtains made Il
| pretty picture under the edge of a
| grassy bank, with tall trees reaching
! their branches half across the narrow
| waterway. a few farm houses were
near the banks, and the place was a
| water cross roads, where two canals
made right angles. Its name Of San-
chow, three bridges, was apt enough,
/ as the three high, narrow stone bridges
were all near together. These country
I bridges are the most picturesque
things in China, a line of narrow
hewn stones being laid on stone pos Is
that hold the footway firmly against
all time. The massive posts and the
| long stones are often carved with
Chinese characters, but the wonder OF
them is chiefly how they were ever laid
there and the stone piles driven in the
mud without steam or mechanical ap-
pliances Of any consequence.
When we scrambled up the banks and
wandered through the wet grass to-
ward the first farm house, the rural
! family came half way to meet US, and
watched us stolldly while we gathered
wild flowers by the handful. by the
aid of our Interpreter we went through
a conversation with the evident head
| farmer, two assistants and four female
| relations, with six children staring like
little statutes
We must have been curiosities to
! these rural wives in their trousers and
loose coats, as their first sight of foreign
| women. and we stood like milliner' :
dummies and let them walk around
and touch our dresses and finall lose
| themselves in amaZement at the puzzle
OF the second skin, or gloves, on our
hands.
The graves OF their ancestors rose in
hummocks in the midst of the field Of
dwarf cotton around the i'll kept farm
house, as the Chinaman burieS his an
cestOr in whatever spot an omen may
indicate to him, and all his thrift does
not conquer this superstition that dots
all the cultivated fields with burial
mounds. The tops of the plants of the
water chestnut rose from an acre OF
muck and water, and the farmer,
after digging to his elbows in the mud
and bringing up only green tubers, in
formed us that ''they would not be
ripe until old Father Frost camC
along" One of his assistants sat con.
tentedly down on the wet grass and
began chewing the end of a three foo
| stalk of sugar cane for his breakfast
and we went out on one Of the three
bridges and watched a duck farmer
. polling along in fiat bOttomed skiff anC
driving his flock to pasture. Thre
| hundred and more ducks quacked a
sight of the strange figures on tn,
bridge, and beat the water with thei
wings in their hurry to get past
r while the duck farmer hooked in a few
, stray birds with his crook and evi
: dently thought his view of the curlosi
ties dear one, when his ducks left TIL
] water and scrambled wildly up th
2 banks and into the fields.
5 We foated slowly in our boats NJ
the creek for the next few hours
t watching cane fields, millet and cottOl
fields, farm houses and the innumeT
! able bridges. before which the mast
and sails were uuhn I and laid fat Ol
! the cabin root, 1T we saw III
| | venerable gT.E Is of Chan
2 Sha.
! Equal parts of culoroform and alcho
! hol will remove paint spots from cottO
I goods.
: "A S75, 900 mile race-track is abou
= TO be built in the northern suburbs O